There are no council by-elections this week, but there are four scheduled for next week. We can expect a slew of contests this summer as a number of newly elected and poorly vetted Reform and Green councillors either jump ship or are pushed out. Both parties have suspended several councillors within days of being elected. Two Green councillors in London have already resigned over electoral law breaches, while a Reform councillor in Essex has resigned over unsavoury social media posts about Asian people.
Next week we'll begin our new election preview format, in which we will each issue an individual forecast for each seat. This will save us a weekly phone call that can be quite time consuming as we don't always agree on the forecast and end up digressing into other matters!
We should also address the accuracy of our predictions for the big elections held last week - mixed results as always...
Firstly, what we got right. We said we would probably see Labour's worst election results in history - statistically this proved to be the case overall. Taking away the devolved government results, the local election results alone were the worst in Labour's history. We said they would not only lose power in Wales, but they would finish third. They actually finished a distant third. We said Labour would lose overall control of 'many' of their councils where a third of seats were up for election. 30 Labour councils had a third of council seats up for grabs and the party lost overall control of 13 of these councils. We said most Labour controlled councils would slip into no overall control, as proved to be the case.
The jury is still out on how Starmer exits, but we remain resolute in that prediction. We underestimated his robotic resolve in clinging on, but we also overestimated the backlash of his comrades in the PLP. Resignations did follow, but the cascade effect has not materialised and did not reach the lofty positions of Cabinet - with only one exception. We said that Streeting would not be keen to go first, but that in the result that a stalking horse did not take the plunge, he would be forced to do so himself. That has turned out to be the case - "a risky business if no-one follows suit". So far, spot on in that respect.
As for the things we got wrong. We said Labour would lose around two thousand seats, they actually lost 1,498. We said they would end up with closer to 150 seats, but this was based on a Wikipedia entry that suggested they were defending 2,196 seats. We understand that the correct figure was closer to 2,500, although the exact figure differs depending on the source. So not a bad prediction in hindsight, though not quite as apocalyptic as we had foreseen.
We also predicted Labour would lose overall control of every single local authority outside London where all seats were up for election. We would have got this spot on, were it not for one solitary council hold in Sefton, Merseyside. Despite losing 15 seats, Labour remained way out in front of the second placed Lib Dems and retained control.
Finally, in Scotland we predicted the status quo in terms of a minority SNP government, but our insinuation that Labour could finish third did not bear fruit. While Labour finished joint second with Reform on the number of seats won - 17 - they outperformed Reform in constituencies and technically finished ahead of Reform in terms of votes won and the percentage share of the vote. Reform's inability to win a single Scottish constituency seat will be a worry to Farage if Reform are to win an outright majority in any general election. Clearly, Scotland is not as sold on Reform as we envisaged.
Not a bad set of predictions, but we are still hoping to be proved wrong on the big question of Keir Starmer's premiership. We said repeatedly that these elections would be the end of him, but we sincerely hope he remains in office. He is our greatest asset. Sometimes it's better to stick with what you know - and we know just how toxic and dreadful he is - rather than improve Labour's standing with a new face at the helm. Finish them, Sir Keir. Finish the party for good!
